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Author:
Franco Salzillo
Red velvet cakes are the sexiest of cakes; what a vibrant color! The food coloring doesn’t change the flavor of the cake, but psychologically, you know it tastes better because it’s red.
Today we’re making a tasty red velvet cake from scratch, and we’re adding a few tablespoons of instant coffee to the batter. This will give our cake a darker red color that looks incredible (think of red wine), and it will also infuse the sponge cake with the unmistakable flavors of coffee.
Our cake will also have a cream cheese frosting, both in a thick middle layer and on the outside. We’re adding coffee to the frosting as well, turning that white frosting into a golden one.
You’ll have coffee flavors in every bite, but this will still be a classic red velvet cake. This is what I call subtlety, small changes that make a big difference.
Our cake’s dry ingredients are flour, cornstarch, baking soda, sugar, salt and instant coffee. On the other side, the wet ingredients are butter, eggs, vegetable oil, vanilla extract and buttermilk. We’ll use a few drops of red die, too, of course.
The frosting is basically cream cheese, butter, sugar and instant coffee. You’ll love how easy it is.
For starters, you want to wait until your cake has cooled down before adding the cream cheese layers. Then you should cool it down in the fridge for around an hour before serving for the best results.
If you have leftovers, store your cake in the fridge in a cake box or cover it with aluminum foil. Be careful not to ruin the frosting!
For the coffee cream cheese frosting:
Preheat the oven to 350°F and grease 22 9-ich diameter cake pans.
In a large mixing bowl, sift the flour, and combine with the cornstarch, instant coffee, baking soda and salt.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the butter at room temperature and sugar until combined and fluffy. Add the oils, eggs (one at a time), vanilla extract, food coloring and buttermilk. Incorporate everything before continuing with the following ingredients.
Add the flour mix to form a runny cake dough.
Divide the dough between your two cake pans and bake for thirty minutes. Check the cakes are cooked through.
Remove from the oven and cool down on a cooling rack.
Make your cream cheese frosting by whipping the cream cheese and butter until smooth, then add the sugar, vanilla extract and instant coffee. Combine thoroughly until peaks form.
Spread the frosting over one cake (already cold), cover it with the second cake, and frost the cake’s top and sides.
